AI is a bubble, just like dot-com

constraintlab.com · 2 months ago · 25

A software engineer argues that current disagreement about AI's impact stems not from model quality but from unresolved questions about how teams should work with AI systems, comparing the situation to the dot-com era where both Amazon and Pets.com existed simultaneously. The author notes that intelligent people reach opposite conclusions about AI because they're operating on untested assumptions about what AI enables that wasn't possible before. Rather than declaring one side right and one deluded, the author proposes that understanding requires examining specific cases and asking what capabilities AI actually unlocks, with the caveat that models may not improve fast enough to settle these debates automatically.